Pages

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Anam Cara Writing Retreat - Day 1

What is it about teaching that makes me so nervous? After all, I've taught fulltime for more than a decade. Perhaps it's that I'm teaching poetry in Ireland --- Ireland --- the land of poets. Perhaps it's because poetry is the mainstay of my life and so I must find a way to be my best self and smarter than I believe myself to be. Perhaps I care very much that my students benefit from their experience.

I feel so lucky to have a group of incredibly interesting and talented women to work with from different countries, continents, and representing varied life experiences. One thing I've learned from teaching here at Anam Cara Artists Retreat and at Poets on the Coast is that place trumps person. Here's what I mean: I will do my best to provide interesting classes but more than half the experience happens due to place: the cows bellowing in the fields, the crocosmia wild along the edge of the road, the ever changing theater of the sky.

Now that I've taught one full day, done my first one-on-one consultation and prepped for tomorrow's three hour class, I can breathe more easily. I'm no longer the lone cow standing on the beach but instead part of a vibrant community of writers. All I need to do is offer some guidance and then get out of the way. I am finally in the moment, comfortable with the routine of sharing poems, reading poems in order to get at craft questions, and writing together. All sorts of other questions come up in conversation and we find ourselves talking about favorite novels or where a poem comes from. Instead of being nervous about whether I'm up to the job, I am wondering which place in Ireland, or Italy, or India I might teach in next.

Thanks, Maureen;I believe this is a country that values poetry. I've seen poetry sections with living poets in every bookshop I've visited. Even the restaurants and cafes have poetry in some places. I hope that you make it here one day; Anam Cara would be a good place to land.

Susan Rich is the author
of four collections of poetry, most recently, Cloud Pharmacy and The Alchemist’s Kitchen, which was a Finalist for the Foreword
Prize and the Washington State Book Award. Her other books include Cures Include Travel (2006)
and The Cartographer’s Tongue /
Poems of the World (2000) which won the PEN USA Award for Poetry and
the Peace Corps Writers Book Award. She is the recipient of awards from
Artist’s Trust, 4Culture, The Times Literary Supplement of London, Seattle
Mayors Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, and the Fulbright Foundation. Susan's poems have been published in many journals including: Antioch Review, Gettysburg Review, Harvard Review, and The Southern Review.

Currently, she is Professor of creative writing and film studies at Highline
Community College. Susan also works as the poetry editor for The Human journal based in
Istanbul, Turkey and along with Kelli Russell Agodon is founder of Poets on the Coast: A Writing Retreat for
Women.Along with Brian Turner and
Jared Hawkley, she is editor of the anthology, The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Writing Across Borders published
by McSweeney’s and the Poetry Foundation (2013). Susan lives in Seattle,
WA and writes in the House of Sky, a few blocks from the Puget Sound.